YuMe Says It’s Launching A Video DSP In Q2

While it has taken video ad network YuMe quite some time to make programmatic progress, the company revealed during its first-quarter earnings call it would launch a demand-side platform sometime in the second quarter.

Wall Street analysts wondered whether YuMe’s DSP, called YuMe For Advertisers (YFA), would include a bidder or simply integrate with external DSPs.

“Part of the functionality of a DSP is to access existing exchanges,” said Jayant Kadambi, YuMe’s CEO. “It will bid based on price and … we will add enhancements [such as] cross-platform bidding.”

He claimed YuMe doesn’t subscribe to “reactive brand safety,” and that its coming DSP would, instead, run impression-by-impression analysis before and during video campaigns.

“It will proactively assess fraud and … serve marketers who want the efficiencies of programmatic with brand-safety measures,” he said.

Kadambi said YuMe’s technology stack includes a publisher monetization platform and data-management platform that processes audience signals from its publisher platform. It said it is developing a brand-safe programmatic marketplace.

There was no mention of Video Reach, a programmatic ad-targeting tool the company had previously rolled out last March for brands and trading desks, which presumably fulfilled demand-side capabilities already.

The anticipated DSP roll-out in Q2 will incorporate a DMP, campaign optimization, planning and reporting tools, as well as let clients import their own data, said Kadambi.

YuMe saw $1 million in revenue flow its way through trading desks, claiming it added five such integrations in the US and in Europe in the fourth quarter, which Kadambi called “early stage sequential progress in programmatic revenue.” Total revenue for the quarter was $40.1 million, up 7.7% from a year ago.

YuMe also touted a new partnership with media workflow tool STRATA, which the company said would enable marketers to package digital video inventory along with local TV buys. It expects to add incremental revenue from the STRATA deal, although it isn’t providing any guidance on the partnership just yet.

YuMe’s number of advertiser clients totaled 455 for the first quarter, a 30% increase from 351 a year prior. Average revenue per advertiser customer dipped slightly – 1%, to $582,000 per customer, which YuMe attributed to growth in new and smaller advertisers, who typically come in at lower commitments than large brand advertisers.

The company said it would re-evaluate how it reports average spend per customer, and would begin to factor in larger advertiser spend to accurately weigh the mix.